Happiness is a Bad Goal

Last week my wife and I walked into a skincare store…

Does that sound like the first line of a bad joke?

I guess I should say, my wife wanted to go to a skincare store, and I was with her.

Even though the employee only spoke Portuguese - and my wife doesn’t speak much - they were speaking the same language that day. I was the one who was confused half the time!

So what am I writing about today? About the mystery of how women connect over skincare? No. I’m writing about the little clear plastic pills they had in a bowl by the cash register.

Each one had a little slip of paper rolled up on the inside. On the slip was a positive message.

I thought, “The Chinese have fortune cookies, and apparently Brazilians have fortune… pills.”

My cerebral cynicism continued, “Are they trying to normalize pill-popping, or passively promote an association between pills and beauty? After all, they do love their synthetic enhancements down here.”

But I digress.

Intrigued, I took one.

This was the message, “If you want to understand the meaning of happiness, you must see it as a reward and not as a goal.”

I didn’t expect that.

Reward or Goal

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, a famous French author and pilot, is attributed with that quote.

It’s a simple line, but it hits deep.

Our world is obsessed with chasing happiness. I remember back in high school during a discussion in class one day, a Brazilian foreign-exchange student (oddly enough) blurted out, “Doesn’t God just want us to be happy?!?”

In other words, isn’t happiness the goal?

We treat it like a destination: something we can reach if we just think positive, make more money, take enough vacations, buy the right things, or pray to God. But the Flying Frenchman flipped the script. Happiness isn’t the goal. It’s the result of pursuing something better.

If I knew better, I’d do better, right? But it’s not just doing better, we must pursue better. I’m not talking about becoming more efficient and focused or disciplined in order to run faster and think better, but instead pursuing the right things.

By virtue of aiming at the right thing, we are already doing better. And by pursuing the that right thing, we are therefore pursuing better. Because you can chase the wrong thing and get it, and still be a failure.

Happiness Is Not the Goal

Dr. Jordan Peterson has been critical of how modern culture promotes self-esteem. I believe that self-esteem and happiness are very closely related; often times possibly even the same thing. A person with low self-esteem is not a happy person. An unhappy person does not usually have high self-esteem.

We tell people—especially young people—to believe in themselves, to feel confident, to “love who you are.” That sounds great on the surface. But Peterson points out that self-esteem that isn’t earned is hollow.

Instead of self-esteem, he says, we should be pursuing competence. In other words, become someone worth respecting—not just in your own eyes, but in reality. This means that other people will respect you for who you have become and what you accomplished. Their respect will be more than enough to compensate for whatever lack of esteem you had for yourself. The character that is forged in you during this process, and the satisfaction of affecting their lives in a meaningful way will produce a sense of happiness about your own life as a result.

Learn something hard. Solve a real problem. Build a life that adds value to others while also being anchored in eternity. When you do that, self-respect grows, and with it comes a deep, earned confidence. It doesn’t rely on daily affirmations wrapped up in fake pills at a skin care store, or in highly addictive simulated fantasies. Nor is it tripped up or derailed by immature and elusive emotions and notions of “happiness.”

Deion Sanders is known for telling athletes, “Don’t chase the bag. Chase excellence and the money will find you.” Pursue better.

Happiness, then, is not a goal to chase—it’s a byproduct of becoming someone competent, capable, and trustworthy.

It’s May. What happened to your goals for this year? Are you happy with your progress? It’s not too late to do better and pursue better.